By Robbie Butler

Last year the long running partnership between EA Sports and FIFA came to an end when EA Sports FC was launched on gaming consoles such as PlayStation and Xbox. The relationship between the two could be traced back to 1993 with the launch of FIFA International Soccer and the annual iterations of the very successful game that followed.

Another relationship between a football authority and enterprise also ended recently. That of UEFA and Panini. Since 1970, the Italian company has produced stickers for the FIFA World Cup. While this relationship may be intact, UEFA’s agreement recently came to an end.

My earliest memory of collecting stickers for a tournament was at Euro ’88. The Republic of Ireland had qualified and for the first time, Irish players were part of the album. For the following tournaments, Panini’s monopoly continued with World Cups and European Championships. Today it is younger members of my household that have revived stickers in my life and albums have returned. The first was in 2018, then 2020(1) and most recently at Qatar in 2022. All were Panini.

The 2024 competition is the first in my lifetime that Panini are not involved. Instead Topps have replaced Panini. There are several noticeable different in the album and approach of the new brand.

The first is that the album itself was free. I am not sure if this is the general approach – it makes sense – but it is a first for me.

The second is the size of the booklet. The last six tournaments have had between 540 and 682 stickers: 2010 FIFA World Cup - 640; UEFA Euro 2012: 540; 2014 FIFA World Cup - 640; UEFA Euro 2016 - 680; 2018 FIFA World Cup -682; UEFA Euro 2020 - 678.

From scanning the album for 2024 I believe there are over 800 stickers! That’s a lot more money to spend if you want to fill the book. Maybe this is why the stickers are not labelled 1-814 but instead get numbered via a country or letter code first. It’s an odd approach and difficult to follow.

The third is the inclusion of teams that haven’t made the Finals! This is a first for me. It is probably due to the very late point at which teams now qualify – March 2024 – and is not the publisher’s fault as the album needs to be designed and prepared for distribution. But the 9 teams that failed to qualify for the tournament via the playoffs all appear in the album (albeit in smaller sticker form). You will see Wales, Greece, Finland and more in the book. You won’t see them next month in Germany.

Another downside of this is that teams that have qualified via the playoffs also appear as smaller stickers, and somewhat diminish these qualifying countries.

Fourth, some teams are unlicensed as Panini still holds the rights for countries such as England, Germany, Italy and Spain. This means that some top players are not included in the album. Maybe this is why player names are not listed under where the sticker will go.

​So, interest has quickly waned in this house. The book seems unachievable and is not terribly interesting. This compares to Qatar 2022 when nearly 80% of the Panini album was filled here. The arrival of “competition” has done little to improve the product. One monopoly has been traded for another. I believe the original one was better. 

By John Considine

Manchester United won the FA cup yesterday.  Thirty-nine years ago, they also collected the trophy but one of their starting 11 was not allowed collect his medal on the Wembley steps.  Kevin Moran was sent off, with 15 minutes remaining in the game, for a strategic foul on Everton’s Peter Reid.  Moran’s banishment was one way the FA could punish players and teams from deviating from the objectives of the game.
 
Strategic fouling, like other strategic behaviour, has always been part of sport.  Most competitive sports people do it and expect their side to do it.  It is grudging accepted by most.  It is based on playing to the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the game.  Commentators will frequently say the player “took one for the team”.  Kevin Moran took one for the team but some feel it was correct to not allow him to collect his winners medal on the Wembley steps.
 
Compare Moran’s behaviour and punishment with that of West Ham United’s Lucas Paqueta.  The issue came to light this week.  Paqueta is charged with breaking the rules on gambling and it was reported that it involved “strategic” fouling.  The media reports suggested that the fouls were committed for the benefit of individuals outside the team.  Most of the tackles that led to the booking looked normal.  It seems that the problem was the suspicious betting patterns around the disciplinary cards received by Paqueta.  What exactly is meant by “suspicious betting patterns”?  It effectively means that the individual(s) beat the bookies.  The problem for the sports organization is that such betting distracts players from pursuing the objectives of the game.
 
But aligning the objectives of the game and individual behaviour is not easy.  Even for sporting organisations.  At a minimum, sporting organisations can be accused of being inconsistent.  Every time Lucas Paqueta plays, he wears a West Ham shirt that promotes a betting entity.  Should gambling companies be allowed to sponsor sport?  Now we get into the messy definition of gambling.  Would this include financial share trading entities?  Messy.
 
Kevin Moran played Gaelic Football for Dublin before he made his successful move to Manchester United.  He also played while contracted to United!  Gaelic footballers were not, and are not, paid to play the game.  Even at the highest level.  And the highest level of the sport, the organization does not take funding from gambling companies.  It was a point made by the President of the Association, Jarlath Burns, recently when justifying the partnership between the GAA and a broadcaster.  Jarlath made the point that the GAA does not accept sponsorship from gambling or alcohol companies.
 
Yet, there is hardly a local GAA club that does not run a lottery or similar gambling competition to raise funds.  Picking a set of numbers is gambling.  Some would say it is the worst form of gambling where it is close to pure luck.  Repackaging the fund raising as "buying a ticket" is almost the same.  In both cases the outcome is determined by the luck of the draw.  All are a version of gambling.
 
One wonders if the situation might be called Jarlath’s Dilemma in the same way that there is Greta’s Dilemma when it comes to environmental issues.  Good intentions don't always lead to better outcomes.
 
(Greta’s Dilemma is explained by Kaushik Basu, former Chief Economists at the World Bank, in his recent book Reason to Be Happy.)

By David Butler

The English Premier League has concluded and end of season awards are being handed out to the best performers. Based on net (non-penalty) expected goals statistic per 90 minutes who were the best (and worst) performers this season? This stat considers how many goals a player scored in light of how many goals they should have scored given the opportunities presented to them - it attempts to contextualise performance and overcome the challenges of the goals scored count. 
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The table below shows the top ten best and worst players. If you want to think about this very simply the players on the left hand side scored goals they shouldn't have, while the players on the right missed plenty of good chances. Diogo Jota tops the list of overperformers – given the quality of chances available to Jota, he was highly efficient and outperformed his expected goals. This will not surprise Liverpool fans, nor will the fact that Diaz and Nunez feature on the underperformers list. These players failed to convert many good opportunities.

By Robbie Butler
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The Premier League came to an end yesterday afternoon and Manchester City became the first club in the history of England football to win 4 titles in a row. The Manchester club have now won 6 of the last 7 titles and demonstrate remarkable consistency over time. 

Some might argue that City were not at their best this season, and that Arsenal and Liverpool missed a great chance to win the title. This perspective demonstrates just how good City’s “best” is. The table below list every team in the history of the English Premier League to have achieved 85 points or more. 

29 teams are listed in total across various generations of Premier League football. The table is something of a "Champion of [mostly] Champions".  

The suggestion that City were poorer than usual may not stack up with the recent data. Their 91-point haul in 2023/24 is better than both 2022/23 and 2020/21. So, this is the 2nd best effort during the 4-in-a-row streak. The “peak” seasons so appear to be just before Covid. With both City and Liverpool from 2017-20 dominating the best seasons.

​Arsenal’s 2023/4 effort would have been City in both 2020/21 and 2022/23. Not that this will comfort fans of the London club. 

By John Considine

Last week it came to light that two recently drafted NFL players had a $10,000 bet between themselves.  The bet was on who would be the Offensive Rookie of the Year.  Apparently, this breached NFL rules.  The bet has now been called off.

Last Friday, I attended the sports economics session at the Irish Economic Association Annual Conference.  During the session it was suggested that a Premier League owner, in the conduct of another one of their other businesses, might operate on a particular betting market.  Yet, two players have been barred from playing Premier League games this season because of breaching Premier League rules on gambling.
 
Now consider the following scenario.  A player is negotiating a contract with an owner.  Suppose that one proposal is that a player takes 2,000 less in basic salary but will get an extra 10,000 if they finish top of a particular metric at the end of the year.  Should these bonus type proposals be prohibited by sports organisations?

By Robbie Butler
 
Unhappiness with GAA Go has reared its head again. It is becoming an annual event in Ireland where politicians and others complain that some senior hurling and football matches are not screened on free-to-air television but instead appear on a paywalled streaming service called GAA Go.

This time last year I wrote about the cost of watching the summer schedule given the movement of some games to subscription service GAA. The post can be found here.

​The "Season Pass" for 2024 again costs €79. As each individual game costs €12, and there are 38 for sale, the sensible approach is to buy the €79 pass, with an average price of just over €2 per game. I suspect people are instead waiting to see what games will be shown, closer to the match day, and then baulk at the €12 charge.

Here is an idea that worked for me. I bought the League of Ireland season ticket (LOITV) for €120 last December and gave it as a Christmas present to a fan. It may not be easy to think of these gifts in the depths of winter; the League of Ireland is dormant until February and the GAA does not resurface seriously until April. However, it is now almost mid-summer, and the gift is in use at least every 14 days.

My Christmas present of 2023 will be used all the way through the year up to late October. The deadweight loss associated with presents has been avoided on this occasion. GAA Go could do the same thing, if people can access the product in late 2024 for the following season, and can imagine summer time in the darkness of Ireland's long winter.

By David Butler

Much has been written on this blog about VAR and rules changes in football. A recent thought by John Considine came to mind when I was watching PSG vs Dortmund last night. In the dying second a PSG defender crashed into a Dortmund player trying to shield the ball in the corner – it was as blatant a foul one would come across, but the referee waved play on.  As John recently wrote,-   “In explaining the non-penalty decision, Webb used words like "threshold" and "certainty" many times. Webb was effectively saying that referees require a higher degree of certainty when it comes to giving penalty kicks.  He clearly implied that the burden of proof is higher later in games.”  

Corner flag behaviour/ legal time-wasting is a great example in football where the ‘threshold’ changes – it as if the laws of the game break down if the referee suspects a players motivations are not in line with the spirit of the game; defensive players are often given a carte blanche to recapture the ball when it is retained by the corner flag. These ‘thresholds’ exists in different places on the pitch at different times in the match and are often based on referees’ inference of player motivations.

Of course, over time these thresholds have fluctuated greatly and new rules have regulated what is acceptable.  In general, this does worry me when sport is suggested as a ‘natural laboratory’ for research – sports have the same name, but so much has changed over time. Triggers broom comes to mind. 

By John Considine

In addition to being America’s pastime, baseball could be labelled as the laboratory for economists looking at decision making.  Two workers, with both opposing and similar interests, perform their task under the watchful eye of a third person designated with the task of quality control.

This laboratory got a significant upgrade in the early years of the 21st century.  Technology was introduced that made it possible to evaluate the productivity and decision making of the quality controller.  Economists availed of this opportunity.  Mike Hsu’s recent paper in the Journal of Sports Economics is prime example.  The paper is also a fine example of clear presentation.
 
The beauty of baseball is in the eye and mind of the controller.  It is as close to the perfect natural experiment as one can get when it comes to examining biased decision making.  It allows the researcher to clearly identify errors when it comes to the umpire’s call on ball location.  If these errors are correlated with factors such as the skin colour of the players then there is a problem.  In determining if there is a statistical relationship between these errors and other factors of interest the usual approach is to include all potential factors that might explain the errors.  The beauty of baseball is that it allows the identification of errors on each individual play.  The correlations are done separately.  After identifying the errors, Hsu examines the statistical correlation with the location of the game.  He shows evidence of home bias.
 
Many non-baseball papers are not able to identify the errors of the umpires or referees independently or individually.  To some extent, VAR facilitates the identification of errors in soccer.  However, even in the detection of offside errors, using technology to determine body position, it is accepted that there can be problems with the technology (see Robbie's post below).  Some researchers attempt to re-officiate the game using other officials based in venue or by viewing broadcasts.  These methods pale by comparison with baseball’s pitch tracking technology.  As a result, much research seeks to identify bias in decision making statistically.
 
Gaelic games offer a different type of laboratory for the examination of home bias.  A large proportion of games are played at neutral venues.  This facilitates a statistical comparison of decisions made when one team is at home with decisions made at neutral venues.  This is what myself and colleagues do in a paper in the online first section of the Journal of Sports Economics (here).  We are primarily concerned with the statistical relationship between referee calls and the state of the scoreboard but we also test for home bias.  We find no evidence of it.
 
Like many researchers, we test for potential biases using the statistical approach but without the clear identification of errors available to those using data from baseball.  However, our results do support another finding in baseball.  Tobias Moskowitz has shown that the errors made by baseball umpires favour the player behind in the count.  Pitchers get the dodgy calls when they are behind in the count.  Batters get them when they are behind.  Our research on hurling is similar.  The team behind on the scoreboard is more likely to get a favourable call.

By Robbie Butler

I have written about VAR quite a bit on this website. I surprised myself in fact when I did a quick check. You can find previous posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. 11 in total - one for every player on the pitch!

I believe VAR is (or maybe now has) fundamentally changed the game, and not for the better. What we now have is not part of some VAR evolution, where mistakes are reduced over time, but rather the reality of what it will be going forward. And football withe VAR is becoming less and less for me. 

​As a Republic of Ireland supporter, I know the pain of referee mistakes and clear and obvious errors. The picture on the right is the famous Thierry Henry handball that helped eliminate Ireland from the 2010 World Cup. France beat the Irish 2-1 in a two-legged playoff to reach the Finals in South Africa.

Had VAR been in use, the goal scored by William Gallas following Henry's handball would have been ruled out, and Ireland may have gone on to win the playoff.

The defeat was painful, and Ireland have not reached the World Cup Finals since, and may not do so for some years, given current performances. My naive assumption was that the introduction of VAR would stop this sort of behaviour. It has, but it has also done so much more. Upon reflection, I am happier to accept errors like the picture above than allow VAR to intervene the way it currently does. Here is why.

Offside is now effectively ruined by VAR. The system use in England is arbitrary at times with marginal calls. Here is why I believe so. 

I have yet to see a VAR dead heat. Given the number of VAR offside calls over the past number of years and the use of VAR in so many leagues, it is surely a statistical certainty that on at least one occasion, two players have been directly in line with one another - or VAR dead heated. The pictures below help illustrate this. 

The two above are recent high-profile VAR calls between Arsenal and Spurs as well as Man Utd and Coventry. The picture below is a dead heat in horse racing. 

Dead heats in horse racing are relatively rare but they do happen. I have no idea how often they occur but anecdotally you will hear about one a couple of times a year in this part of the world.

They same must be true of VAR calls. So where is the dead heat?